Israeli democracy is still bleeding from the shots Yigal Amir fired into the back of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In the years since Rabin's assassination, democratic rule in Israel has been increasingly undermined. Political violence and hate crimes, collectively whitewashed with the moniker "price tag" attacks, have become an everyday occurrence, not just in the territories but in Israel proper. Even worse, the premier institution of Israeli democracy, the Knesset, is now the scene of dangerous legislative proposals. Some have already become law, blackening our law books, choking our democracy, and even threatening to destroy it. Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox! The assassination is still exacting a price. Yigal Amir may have pulled the trigger, but he was not a rogue element. Standing behind him were a slew of provocateur rabbis and the extremist ideology espoused by a wide swathe of settler society. Israeli society never addressed the problem of this support network. As a result, rabbinic and political elements continue to fan wind into the sails of political violence and hate crimes. Such violence could one day lead to the next assassination, heaven forbid. Yigal Amir was raised under the tutelage of racist, fundamentalist rabbis. He is on record as saying that had he not received halakhic approval for the abominable murder, he would never have pulled the trigger. Yet his rabbinic mentors were never indicted or investigated properly. After the murder, a cover-up occurred. On one hand, the media focused on the murderer, not the environment he was raised in. On the other hand, religious Israelis accused the Left of trying to cast blame for the murder on religious-Zionist society as a whole. Therefore, rather than seeing real soul-searching among religious Zionists, rather than prosecuting the rabbis who incited the murderer to the full extent of the law, we witnessed festivals of brotherhood and unity. But behind the scenes a group of dangerous fundamentalists continued to fester, thumbing their noses at democratic values and seeking to reinstate the Kingdom of Judea in place of a democratic, secular Israel. And they continue to do so to this day. In recent months extremist rabbis have issued racist halakhic rulings against Israeli Arabs as well as legitimized violence against Palestinians. It was clear that the "Rabbis' Letter" prohibiting Jews from renting apartments to Arabs, and the warning that those who flout halakhic rulings "are subject to excommunication," would constitute a bad influence leading to more "price tag" attacks. Extremist rabbis have and continue to operate with impunity mainly due to the impotence of our law enforcement system and the passive silence of our judicial elite in the face of rabbis who engage in incitement. Rather than detaining and opening criminal investigations against civil servants who abuse their public positions to incite to violence, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein belatedly announced, following a public outcry, that he would review the rabbis' letter for criminal content. His decision to "review" the matter exposes the weakness of our law enforcement. After all, the attorney general's office was the body that first determined that Safed municipal rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu's call to refrain from selling apartments to Arabs is a criminal offense. They put him on trial, but did not prosecute him to the full extent of the law; instead accepting his promise that he would not make such statements again. But he did. In addition, politicians who allowed incitement to run wild, at least through the tacit consent of their silence, have recently transformed the Knesset Constitution Committee into a cheering section for "price tag" ruffians who received court orders to stay out of the territories. When you signal to violent elements that they enjoy support even within the Knesset, when you give mass clemency to criminals who violently attacked IDF soldiers during the disengagement, then is it any wonder that violence has become a routine everyday occurrence? It is infuriating that we have neither learned nor internalized the lesson of Rabin's assassination. Even today our law enforcement system is weak and helpless in the face of ideological violence against Palestinians, Israeli Arab citizens, leftist NGO activists and IDF soldiers. In all honesty, we have to say that Israeli democracy has become less stable and more fragile. Today, more than ever, it appears that the bullets did not strike the late Yitzhak Rabin only. They pierced the resiliency of Israeli democracy.
We haven't learned our lesson
מערכת ישראל היום
מערכת "ישראל היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
